So let me talk about why calligraphy is temporary, sometimes it is calm when writing, and then the words appear steady, dignified and elegant; Sometimes when you are angry, the words will beat and there will be passion. For example, when Yan Zhenqing wrote Sacrifice to My Nephew, my nephew was killed. He was angry at first, and this word can fully express his anger when he was writing. But there are some words. Sometimes, Zhang Xu writes cursive script, and what he writes is "Abdominal Pain Post", which is an emergency. What about the "Abdominal Pain Patch"? He didn't have time to drive the grass, so it's a problem for you to ask him to write a big seal for Abdominal Pain Post. There will be problems. So writing about the situation at that time, writing about the situation he might encounter at that time, the feeling at this moment has a lot to do with his writing. Therefore, the writing is really like what Wang Bo said in Preface to Wang Tengting: Four beautiful tools, two difficulties, beautiful scenery, saints and guests. At this time, the pen is thin and good, and there is no problem in writing, which will definitely exceed your usual situation. Today, it's stormy, and here is someone you hate, or someone who once slept with you. As a result, you picked up a pen at this time, which is neither paper nor good. It must have written like a pig. This emotion is too important for calligraphy. If I say that Li Kuchan's paintings are beautiful, then the calligrapher's instantaneous beauty is even stronger, that is, his state of mind at that time, here and now will make him a truly great calligrapher and form a sense of beauty in the process of this time. This time has passed, but this beauty remains on paper.
Third, China's calligraphy is a self-sufficient system. Culturally speaking, this self-sufficient system is very important. China's poems, from The Book of Songs to Songs of the South, to Han Fu, to Tang Poetry, to Song Poetry and to Yuan Qu, were all formed in a closed society. Although China said that he was self-sufficient, in fact, this self-sufficiency came from his cultural diversity. Due to its vast territory, China's multiculturalism comes from the inheritance of the Chinese nation in ancient times and the Axis Age. In this self-sufficient system, China has never really launched a real foreign aggression. Once in the Tang Dynasty, Gao Xianzhi asked him to make way and said what it was. At that time, many ethnic minorities in the northwest were not friendly to the Central Plains, so they fought further. As a result, they went to Central Asia. The Central Committee of the Tang Dynasty said, Who told you to come back as soon as possible after playing so far? Gao Xianzhi is back. Once, for a short time. Therefore, China has been a peace-loving nation since ancient times. A nation that has never waged a war of aggression in the essential sense. Therefore, in this peaceful environment, the culture she formed has self-sufficiency and the meaning of existence. Self-sufficient and conservative? That's not true. You know, just like in the Tang Dynasty, Persia, Central Asia and Rome were all called Daqin, and she absorbed all the Roman culture. Therefore, it is a basic feature of self-sufficient culture that China serves the body and the West serves the purpose. Now, some scholars have suggested that western style should serve China people. You are yellow skin, aren't you a descendant of the dragon? How did you become western? Let me ask him first: Western culture serves China, which is putting the cart before the horse. Have you thoroughly understood the culture of our Chinese nation? Have you seen enough? If you haven't fully understood and seen enough, you will jump to the next conclusion and say that China shouldn't. It is absurd to take western culture as the body and serve China. Then, the calligrapher in China suggested that you were naughty in the past and had different disadvantages. There will be no fundamental contradiction between this ancient thing and today, and today's things will not accept ancient mistakes. Then this, a thinking with both inheritance and development, is embodied in these eight words. I think the same is true of calligraphy. You said that calligraphy is self-sufficient, so what should we do as calligraphers and want to innovate? We encourage creativity and innovation, but there is a premise: are you working hard enough? There are many people who can't walk steadily, so they have to run fast and hurdle. It is out of the question. Maybe you will find an audience who appreciates you very much, that is, yourself. There are many such people in the art world, and many people who think they are masters are calling themselves masters. I once told a friend that there was a person who admired you very much. Who did he say? I said it was you.
So to tell the truth, how many times do we stick it with a brush now? There is no such miracle in the world. Wang Duo is a very famous calligrapher, and we are all familiar with him. He once said that his study of calligraphy is a day's entertainment, so he can reach 50.
Fan Ceng: Take me as an example. Speaking of work, I get up at five o'clock every morning and read for two hours for breakfast. Four hours in the morning is basically work, painting, writing or writing articles. Then I usually take a rest in the afternoon and work at least forty hours a week.
Fan Ceng: Continue to say that China's calligraphy is a self-sufficient system. In such a self-sufficient system, China inevitably formed his unique view on the history of calligraphy development. There is a big change, that is, when I was in Gan's family, because of the rise of Piaoxue, what was Piaoxue? Scholars in China are called archaeological research, which has become a university called Puxue. After Pu Xue came up, more and more inscriptions were read, so at this time iron science gave way to stele science. The idea of many people in China is that they haven't left the concept of stele study in the period of Ganjia, and the representative figures of the concept of stele study are Bao's "Art Twin Boat" and Kang Youwei's "Art Twin Boat". He doesn't think the post station is important. Rainbow Xizhi's Lanting is also a post station. He needs to see the original tablet, Weibei tablet and Han tablet, and the research on Weibei tablet is flourishing. Kang Youwei is a very extreme person. He thinks there is nothing wrong with Weibei, but everything in Weibei is good. So the influence of the Ganga era has reached today, and I think some people in the book world think that writing like Wei Bei is a master. If you really write like Wei Bei, I admire you. Wei Bei is really as Kang Youwei said, there is nothing wrong, because it is naive, not because it wants to pretend to be naive, but because it has a very clear calculation in its heart. Pretending to be naive is the most annoying thing, you know. You may have read Mo Bosang's novels. There is an unruly woman. Every time I do something indecent with a man, she says it's my first time to be a girl. This kind of posturing is the most annoying. There are many people's handwriting in calligraphy now, and I feel stupid. A calligraphy theorist told people that blindfolded writing must be better than open eyes. I deeply criticized this view. You should know that calligraphy art and painting art are both visual arts, and this eye plays the most crucial role. It's strange to cover your eyes before writing, but now the standard of appreciation is strange, ugly, messy and dirty. As long as what you write is strange, dirty and ugly, it is creativity, which will be analyzed by many theorists: how wonderful the composition of this creativity is, how expressionistic it is, how phenomenology conforms to Bergson's psychiatry, and so on. In fact, they know nothing about Bergson. When you go to the calligraphy exhibition, you usually see that everyone thinks they have their own personality, which adds up to a collective lack of personality, and everyone is crooked. If you look at a person walking, for example, if I walk in Fan Ceng, it must be like this. What does it mean? Some people walk like this, stagger, what can they get out of. Staggering can only show that you are not physically sound and psychologically unstable. Some are born, doing harmony, jumping like this, jumping like this, and some people write this meaning. If you are a naive fool, it is better for him to be simple and straightforward than to pretend to be naive. He is born silly, and you are a sly man. You can see from your eyes that it is not something. When you go to the calligraphy exhibition, you can see countless such works. If China's calligraphy goes in this direction, China's calligraphy has no future.